


Who Has the Power? : Interpretive Authority in Internet Fanfiction

by ApolloMusagetes (Euterpe)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Literary Theory, Meta, assignment for class, come here if you wanna learn about fanfiction in theory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-26 01:44:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16672411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euterpe/pseuds/ApolloMusagetes
Summary: A remediation of my academic essay for a writing class in the form of a Harry Potter fanfiction





	Who Has the Power? : Interpretive Authority in Internet Fanfiction

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [yer a wizard, dudley](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16435904) by [dirgewithoutmusic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirgewithoutmusic/pseuds/dirgewithoutmusic). 



Professor McGonagall raised her eyebrow at the Muggle device on the Headmaster's desk. "What's this?" she asked.

"A laptop, I believe they call it," said Headmaster Dumbledore. "Take a look," he added, gesturing before him.

McGonagall approached the device cautiously, as a cat might approach a sleeping mouse. She lifted her wand and, after receiving a curt nod of permission from Dumbledore, prodded a key on the device with her wand. The machine whirred. Its screen lit up with what appeared to be a document.

"I'd like you to read it, Minerva, and tell me your thoughts," said Dumbledore, peering at her intently over the rim of his spectacles.

"Hm," said McGonagall. She was already beginning to read.

 

 

 

> _The Authority of Fanfiction_
> 
> _Despite its ever-increasing prominence in pop culture, fanfiction as a literary and social practice remains vastly under-studied. Fanfiction refers to fan-written stories based on characters or settings of existing media, and the majority of fanfiction exists through online hosting platforms. Perhaps due to its association with a “fringe subculture,” fanfiction has not received nearly the same academic attention as other Internet phenomena. Jennifer L. Barnes observes that since most researchers are fanfiction readers or writers themselves, “[fanfiction research]...often relies on subjective analysis, personal experience, small sample sizes, and analysis of specific fandoms. There is a paucity of research that provides quantitative, rather than qualitative analysis of fanfiction stories” (80). This is certainly an issue, as Barnes indicates, when attempting to empirically evaluate the psychology behind writing fanfiction. Nevertheless, the qualitative analyses that do exist readily raise questions about the role of the author in a work’s interpretation and a fan’s willingness to accept that role. In this essay, I will discuss the roles of authors and fans against a backdrop of one online fanfiction writer’s popular series of Harry Potter reimaginings in order to demonstrate that the struggle over interpretive authority in fanfiction blurs the line between readers and writers, departing from traditional definitions of authorship to perhaps establish an entirely new version of authority._

 

McGonagall paused to absorb the information. "It appears to be some sort of academic essay about Muggle affairs," she noted, "although I am unfamiliar with the subject matter." She eyed Dumbledore suspiciously. "Perhaps you would care to explain why Mr. Potter's name appears in this Muggle report?"

"I was hoping you could read the rest before we have our very necessary discussion," said Dumbledore.

"Is this not the end?"

"Apparently not. Do you see the button with the down arrow? Yes, that one. Yes, you may press it to access the rest."

 

 

 

> _The primary text of this essay is a series of 10,000-to-30,000-word reimaginings of plotlines in _Harry Potter_ ; the series is collectively titled “boy with a scar” (stylistically in the lowercase), and it is posted under the username “dirgewithoutmusic” on the fanwork-hosting website Archive of Our Own (AO3). The series is notably popular among the website’s other _Harry Potter_ works—each entry averages around 50,000 views from registered and guest users. Each story of “boy with a scar” is a thought experiment that explores a different what-if situation: for example, what if Harry was Sorted Slytherin, or what if Ron was the Chosen One, or what if Dudley was also a wizard? How would the events of the novels differ if only one major detail were changed at a time? _

 

"What sort of- how would- novels?" sputtered McGonagall.

"I implore you to continue reading."

 

 

 

> _dirgewithoutmusic’s detailed retellings attempt to answer these questions by predicting dramatic changes in character development, inter-character relationships, and even entire plotlines. Her stories require an adequate pre-existing knowledge of J. K. Rowling’s _Harry Potter_ series for readers to truly appreciate the clever twists on the original. Turnouts are sometimes expected—if Ron Weasley’s parents were killed by Voldemort, it is only natural that his older brothers would have raised their family (“the last son”). Turnouts may also be delightfully unexpected—if Dudley Dursley had been a wizard, perhaps he would have been Sorted into Ravenclaw (“yer a wizard, dudley”). In these stories, dirgewithoutmusic takes remarkable liberty in her interpretations of the characters’ personalities, supplying even the smallest imaginary quirks, such as minor character Penelope Clearwater’s passionate interest in the sewer systems under Paris (“yer a wizard, dudley”). _

 

 

"What are these nonsensical lies about our very students - Hogwarts students? This is even more outlandish than whatever Rita Skeeter writes in those articles of hers. And why refer to real individuals as characters in some story?"

"Please continue reading, Minerva."

 

 

>  
> 
> _It is clear that these meticulous stories require exceptional amounts of originality in their construction. Consequently, by boosting elements of the source material with her own creativity, does the fanfiction writer (however inadvertently) claim partial ownership of the original content?_
> 
> _The very existence of these fan works indicates at least a dissatisfaction with some aspect of the original work, a phenomenon that Jennifer L. Barnes identifies as “resistance to authorial authority” (78). Barnes suggests that this resistance is conditional—it is more likely to occur concerning a character’s future, or perhaps “when a revelation in the text overrides or re-writes the audience's previous assumptions about the story” (79). Fanfiction, Barnes asserts, is a product of the complex interaction between a deep emotional attachment to a work and a “willingness” to subvert “authorial authority” (80). This is immediately applicable to dirgewithoutmusic’s “boy with a scar” series, for such thoughtful retellings could only be born of a strong emotional attachment as well as a resistance to authorial authority. These seemingly conflicting feelings are what drive fanfiction writers such as dirgewithoutmusic to see so much potential in a character but remain so unsatisfied with the representation in the source media that they take it upon themselves to publish 30,000-word redemption narratives. And it is obvious from the popularity of these works that it is not only the fanfiction writers but also the fanfiction readers who experience powerful conflicting emotions about their favorite works._

 

 

"And what is this...'fanfiction' that is so important to this essay? Does this mean that these stories are simply fan-written works? But what entity are they fans of? What inspires them to write these works?"

"Please, Minerva."

"My questions better be answered by the end of this meeting, Albus."

 

 

> _Literary scholar Kristina Busse proposes what she coins as the “return of the author,” arguing that what has become important to interpretation of today’s popular media is not the author’s function but the author’s very identity, especially considering the empowerment of minority voices. While it may no longer be appropriate to claim that the author is the sole owner of his or her ideas, Busse suggests that the author has returned to discussions about his or her work “not in a vacuum but as a historical, political, national, social, gendered, and sexed being who writes and is read within particular contexts and against specific historicopolitical and socioeconomic events” (28). Essentially, Busse presents a shift in the central question about authorial ethos from “‘What did the author mean?’ to ‘Who is the author?’” (26). Authorial identity is especially important to fanfiction, where the majority of writers identify as female and/or other marginalized identities. The value of authorial ethos in fanfiction may not be initially apparent due to the “anonymous or pseudonymous nature” of “most online fan material” (Busse 32). However, Busse maintains that “online pseudonyms allows authors to create the ethos they choose for themselves and forces them to continuously reestablish it” (33). The fanfiction writers thus cultivate their own authorial authorities through their online personas._

 

"What? Online personas? Who are these  _people_?"

"Minerva."

"No, Albus, I'm not reading any more until I receive some answers. What is all of this?"

Dumbledore sighed. "I procured this piece of Muggle equipment from a trader in Scandinavia. Apparently it is a piece of technology from the future - yes, time-future. I would estimate it to be around forty to fifty years young."

Dumbledore smiled at what he believed was clever wordplay. McGonagall waited.

Dumbledore coughed awkwardly. "Anyhow," he continued, "when I managed to turn the thing on, it gave me this document that I have been contemplating ever since. It contains several observations about abstract social behavior, and it appears our Mr. Potter is not the main focal point of this essay. However, the parts concerning him point to quite interesting implications."

McGonagall nodded. "As far as I've noticed, it does not seem to talk about him in the way the tabloids do. In fact, it seems that these...'fanfictions' are purely as the name suggests: fantastical, as if the product of someone's imagination."

"I do believe the 'fan-' in 'fanfiction' is used in the sense of a celebrity's fans or Quidditch fans, but I agree nonetheless," replied Dumbledore. "But there was something you asked earlier that struck me. If this is the case, then what are they fans of? Mr. Potter? Why would they then be imagining hypothetical situations about students besides Mr. Potter?"

"The writer did once refer to Mr. Potter's circumstances as 'novels,'"  McGonagall supplied, "and the other students as 'characters.'"

"How curious," said Dumbledore. "Then what does that say about us?"

**Author's Note:**

> 1) If you actually took the time to read and contemplate the italicized sections, thank you.
> 
> 2) The term ‘authorial authority’ warrants the following question: to what degree does (or should) the author have actual authority over interpretations of their work? The answer to this question has varied historically. During the eighteenth century, the practice of intellectual copyright in the West emerged hand-in-hand with the concept of original genius, a philosophy which values most “a thinking and writing that is radically new and different, that is original rather than transformative of old ideas” and thus justifies “authors as owners of ideas—ideas as commodities that can be owned and sold” (Busse 22). Almost two centuries later, the postmodern era of the mid-to-late twentieth century challenged this view of authors as the sole owners of their work and subsequently replaced it with the concept of ‘the death of the author.’ Postmodern thinkers such as Roland Barthes celebrated “open texts...that [are] not contained by singular author-gods declaring their intention but a rather more democratic, reader-oriented texts whose meaning is multiple and gets reinscribed with every new reader,” preferring a total removal (the so-called ‘death’) of the author from the reader’s experience (Busse 24-25). According to this ideology, readers should supposedly be able to glean all necessary information about a text from the text itself without interference from the author’s intention or persona. Present-day literature classrooms still heed this method of subjective, text-based interpretation. The ‘death of the author’ also seems to describe the current relationship between creators of popular media and the fans of their work—after all, the basis of fanfiction is that fans may change the source material to their liking and produce “transformative” work regardless of the original creator’s intent.
> 
> 3) Please read the comments for the rest of my essay's argument.
> 
> 4) Please also read dirgewithoutmusic's "boy with a scar" series if you haven't already.
> 
> 5) Works Cited:
> 
> Barnes, Jennifer L. “Fanfiction as imaginary play: What fan-written stories can tell us about the cognitive science of fiction.” Poetics, vol. 48, 2015, pp. 69-82. ScienceDirect, doi:10.1016/j.poetic.2014.12.004.
> 
> Busse, Kristina. “The Return of the Author: Ethos and Identity Politics.” Framing Fan Fiction, University of Iowa Press, 2017, pp. 19-38.
> 
> dirgewithoutmusic. “the last son.” Archive of Our Own, 29 Sept. 2016, https://archiveofourown.org/works/8158447. Accessed 9 Nov. 2018.
> 
> dirgewithoutmusic. “yer a wizard, dudley.” Archive of Our Own, 28 Oct. 2018, https://archiveofourown.org/works/16435904. Accessed 9 Nov. 2018.


End file.
